The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced rapid growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation. However, these advances have increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs and, for these advances to be realized, similar developments in IC processing and manufacturing are needed. In the course of integrated circuit evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component (or line) that can be created using a fabrication process) has decreased.
However, existing semiconductor fabrication may still have certain drawbacks. One drawback is that, as semiconductor devices continue to get scaled down, certain fabrication processes may cause unintended consequences. For example, the formation of conductive vias/contacts may involve etching a hard mask. This etching process may cause other components (that have the same or similar material composition as the hard mask) to be unintentionally etched through. As a result, a leakage path may be created, which could create undesirable electrical shorting that could lead to degraded device performance or failures.
Therefore, while existing semiconductor devices and the fabrication thereof have been generally adequate for their intended purposes, they have not been entirely satisfactory in every aspect.